Abstract
Over the last fifty years there has been a continual reduction in horticultural and agricultural biodiversity of nutritionally important plants, including those of the Solanaceae family. To add to this, the broad range of traditional crops, previously grown on a sustainable scale in some parts of the world, has been replaced by a narrow range of major crops grown as large-scale monocultures. In order to counteract this trend, and to help maintain a broad wealth of genetic resources, conservation is essential. This, in turn, helps to safeguard food security. A taxonomic inventory, covering the diversity of species in a plant group, is an important first step in conservation. The Solanaceae is one of the major plant families providing food species. A survey of the biodiversity, ethnobotany and taxonomy of subfamily Solanoideae was undertaken and is presented here as an inventory of food species. Fifteen genera provide species that are utilised for food across the world. Of these, only four genera contain economically significant cultivated food cropspecies. The majority of these are in the genus Solanum, whilst Capsicum, Physalis and Lycium contribute the remainder of cultivated crop species. These genera and others also comprise species that are semi-cultivated, tolerated as useful weeds, or gathered from the wild.
Highlights
Around 30,000 of the total of approximately 250,000 flowering plant species in existence are edible [1], with the vast majority of the edible species being “minor crops.”. These may be culturally important cultigens, semi-wild species, wild species, or weeds; in turn they may be locally cultivated on a small-scale, semi-cultivated in and around settlements, gathered from the wild, or tolerated in cultivated areas, respectively
There has been a growing awareness of the vital role of a diversity of wild, semi-domesticated and underdeveloped species in food and livelihood security and their potential for further development and wider use.it is generally anticipated that changes in land use will limit the area available for agriculture and increase the pressure on populations of crop wild relatives (CWR) and wild food plants [18]. The conservation of such species is vital to the maintenance of plant biodiversity, as well as to the preservation of the much-needed genetic diversity, which is essential for traditional plant breeding.Recent Convention on Biological Diversity guidelines [19] take this into account, whist paying due regard to the importance of the associated indigenous and local knowledge
Taxonomic identification and analysis of the extent and distribution of plant genetic diversity are priorities for neglected and underutilised plant species [27]. Diverse plant families such as the Solanaceae the construction of a taxonomic inventory is the first step in the assessment of the biodiversity of its food species; this preliminary task may be important in the protected areas of the world where few floristic studies have been undertaken to assess the naturally-occurring CWRs and traditional landraces found there [28]
Summary
Around 30,000 of the total of approximately 250,000 flowering plant species in existence are edible [1], with the vast majority of the edible species being “minor crops.” These may be culturally important cultigens, semi-wild species, wild species, or weeds; in turn they may be locally cultivated on a small-scale, semi-cultivated in and around settlements, gathered from the wild, or tolerated in cultivated areas, respectively. Around 30,000 of the total of approximately 250,000 flowering plant species in existence are edible [1], with the vast majority of the edible species being “minor crops.”. These may be culturally important cultigens, semi-wild species, wild species, or weeds; in turn they may be locally cultivated on a small-scale, semi-cultivated in and around settlements, gathered from the wild, or tolerated in cultivated areas, respectively. The broad range of traditional crops, which were previously grown on a sustainable scale in some parts of the world, has been replaced by a narrow range of major crops, grown as large-scale monocultures.This has narrowed the number of species upon which global food security depends [3]. Vegetable genetic resourcesare being lost globally at a rate of 1%–2% per year [4]; this is largely as a result of the changes in the way the human population utilises the edible plants of the world
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